Laila is a seasoned cultural administrator and curator with extensive experience working in museums, local and international governmental entities, private companies and nonprofits. With over fifteen years of experience, her portfolio of work includes executive leadership, major exhibitions and public art installations, transnational exchange and partnerships, and interdisciplinary programming. Laila has worked with numerous museums, cultural institutions and artists in the U.S., Middle East and Europe.
Jadallah currently serves as the first Manager of Arts and Culture for the City of Frederick where she acts as a senior advisor to the Mayor for arts and culture and is initiating the city’s comprehensive arts and culture program strategic plan, oversees the city’s public art, cultural programs, and art collection. From 2022—2024, Jadallah was the Director of Exhibitions and Programs at the Qatar America Institute for Culture, curating and overseeing exhibitions, interdisciplinary programs, and transnational partnerships. From 2018 to 2022, she served as the inaugural Managing Director of Washington Studio School where she successfully stewarded the organization’s repositioning as a multi-generational and multi-cultural arts space. Jadallah has extensive experience working with museums across the U.S. developing and touring major exhibitions.
As an independent curator and arts researcher, Jadallah is interested in the forms of cultural and historical expression, reconstitution of cultural heritage and forms of fabulation by modern and contemporary diaspora artists to the art historical canon. She has curated numerous exhibitions featuring celebrated and emerging artists from West Asia and North Africa and their diasporas, as well as contemporary artists from the United States. Her curatorial work has been featured in The Washington Post, Canvas Magazine, Vogue Arabia and more.
She recently served on the Arts at Mason Board (George Mason University College of Visual and Performing Arts), and previously served on the board of Washington Studio School, and the Executive Committee of the Washington, D.C.-region chapter of ArtTable, Inc. where she cochaired State of Art5/DC: A Conversation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2019). Jadallah is a member of Arts Administrators of Color Network, artconnexDC, Association of Art Museum Curators, and the International Council of Museums.
Jadallah received a B.A. from the School of Integrative Studies at George Mason University, and her M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (summa cum laude) in Arab Studies with a focus on modern and contemporary art history and culture of the Arab world. Laila is a three-time D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellow. She was a 2024 U.S. Office of Personnel Management Presidential Management Fellowship Finalist and a Middle East Policy Council 2024 40 Under 40 Awardee for her work in the arts. Previously, she was a Graduate Student Fellow at Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (2020/2021).